on the hunt for good art

Artist Cheat-Sheet: Rene Magritte

About the Artist Cheat-Sheet Series:

In this series I match major artists of the 19th or 20th century with current independent artists who share the artist’s style, subject, tone, etc. By introducing you to artists similar to your favorites, you’ll no longer have the excuse of not knowing any modern day artists you like!

Rene Magritte

As soon as I was introduced to Rene Magritte back in high school, I was drawn to the Belgian Surrealist’s work. Here were world-famous paintings that, unlike all others I’d studied, had a modern visual language and were loaded with wit and irony. It was a classic teenage reaction of excitement seeing an adult (Magritte) thumbing their nose at other grown-ups. This was good stuff! I thought.

I still love Magritte for the same reasons- how he flagrantly subverted cultural norms and perverted people’s sense of propriety. The brilliance of his work lies in the Freudian, surreal mise-en-scenes which riff off of familiar, ordinary contexts. The following are six artists who are, in one fashion or another, following in Magritte’s path…